An Interview with Will Tuttle, Author of “The World Peace Diet,” Part 1

Today we have Part 1 of a 3-part interview I recently did with Will Tuttle, author of the book The World Peace Diet.

Will Tuttle is a nationally recognized writer, educator, pianist and composer devoted to providing words and music that inspire insight and compassion. An award-winning author and Dharma Master in the Zen meditation tradition, his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley focus on educating intuition, and he has taught college course in music, philosophy, mythology, and creativity.

His book, The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony, has been called one of the most important books of the 21st century: the foundation of a new society based on the truth of the interconnectedness of all life.

It is the first book to make explicit the invisible connections between our culture, our food, and the source of our broad range of problems – and the way to a positive transformation in our individual and collective lives.

It is a brilliant book, and I highly recommend it. It is far-ranging in its scope, and leaves no stone unturned in its quest to help us all understand who we are and where we are going.

To learn more about Will Tuttle, and to buy his book, go to his website, http://willtuttle.com

Will also has a World Peace Diet group on Facebook, which you can join.

Part 2 of this 3-part interview will be next time…

The Low Density Lifestyle book is now out! You can check out an excerpt from the book, and buy it, at the Low Density Lifestyle bookstore.

The PETA Interviews, Part 3

Today is the final segment in this three-part interview with Ashley Gonzalez of PETA.

In case you missed Part 1 or Part 2, here’s the links:
The PETA Interviews, Part 1
The PETA Interviews, Part 2

In this interview we talk about talks about PETA”s mission; animal cruelty in slaughterhouses and on farms; the prevalence of E. coli and salmonella in animals and why this occurs; the detrimental effects of eating dairy foods; and PETA’s sexiest vegetarian over 50 contest.

After you watch this video, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it is a very enlightening discussion.

To learn more about PETA, go to peta.org, and to learn about the sexiest vegetarian over 50 contest, go to PETAprime.org.

The PETA Interviews, Part 2

Today I give you the second part of a three-part interview with Ashley Gonzalez of PETA.

The other day was part 1 of this interview, and in this interview we carry on from there.

In this interview we talk about PETA’s outrageous billboard they put up in downtown Glasgow, Scotland; the health benefits of not eating meat; the relationship between eating meat and climate change – meat production is the number one cause of climate change; animal cruelty and the meat industry; how far removed we are from the source of our food; PETA’s educational outreach programs in schools; the origins of the swine flu; and much, more more.

I’m sure when you watch the above video you’ll agree with me that the discussion is an enlightening one.

To learn more about PETA, go to peta.org

This interview will be continued next time…

The PETA Interviews, Part 1

Last week I mentioned that PETA had announced their 2010 sexiest vegetarian male and female over 50 contest, and today I follow that up with the above video, which is the first part of a three-part interview with Ashley Gonzalez of PETA.

I’ve written about PETA in the past – I wrote articles about Mimi Kirk and Julian Winter, the winners of PETA’s 2009 sexiest vegetarian female and male, and I also did a three-part interview with Mimi.

I’ve also written about some of the outrageous things PETA has done with the article The PETA Hijinks. The article covered such things as their banned Super Bowl ad “Veggie Love,” their attempt to pay the city of Topeka, Kansas $6,000 to fill potholes in their streets and mark the repairs with messages condemning Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the billboard they put up in Glasgow, Scotland linking meat eating to man-boobs.

Today’s interview discusses PETA’s mission, their origins, their work in animal rights, their sexiest vegetarian over 50 contest (and their sexiest vegetarian next door contest), the benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet, and their famous “Veggie Love” ad.

To learn more about PETA, you can go to PETA.org. And to enter into the 2010 sexiest vegetarian over 50 contest, go to PETAprime.org.

To be continued next time…

Sustainable/Green Living: Living Light on Mother Earth

A new series begins as of today, on green and sustainable living. Earth Day was a few weeks ago, but because I was on hiatus last week, I couldn’t write it about it last week. So the series begins today.

In reality, though, everyday should be Earth Day.

A Low Density Lifestyle is not just about being on the path of health and wellness, and of healthy living in general. Of course, this is so important.

A Low Density Lifestyle also will make you feel lighter of body and mind, and allow you to feel less dense in relationship to our planet.

With all the concern about global warming, pollution and toxins in our environment – what with the recent oil spill in the Gulf Coast – and also sustainable foods and agriculture, it’s so important to apply a Low Density Lifestyle to the environment, and tread lightly wherever you go.

The point is that living a Low Density Lifestyle applies not only to your personal well-being, but to the well-being of the greater whole. You can say that it extends to the health and wellness of the entire planet, so that the planet can experience healthy living.

Before I close today’s article, I want to bring your attention to the below video, which is footage of the Gulf Coast oil spill, and an in-situ burn.

This is an ecological and environmental disaster, and shows the shortsightedness of the policy of “Drill, Baby, Drill,” which was the Republican mantra back in 2008. It was was their solution to what the U.S. energy policy should be – just drill offshore.

Well, at least one right-thinking Republican, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, has pulled the plug on Drill, Baby, Drill. He has announced that there will be no offshore drilling in California.

What the U.S. and the world needs is an innovative energy policy, a Low Density Lifestyle energy policy, one that stresses renewable resources, conservation, and a lessening of consumption.

As opposed to Drill, Baby, Drill – which is just more of the same: a tired, antiquated way of thinking, and an expression of a High Density Lifestyle paradigm, a way of life that has created the problems that we are now facing.

And which is the paradigm we need to move away from.

An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 2

Today I continue with the second part of a three-part exclusive interview I recently did with Mimi Kirk, who is no ordinary 71 year old. In 2009, when she was 70, Mimi was voted by PETA as the sexiest vegetarian female over 50.

If you didn’t see the first part of the interview with Mimi Kirk, don’t forget to review it by clicking on this link:
An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 1

The interview was conducted over skype with only one technical snafu – about halfway through today’s interview Mimi’s screen froze, so you’ll see me wait about 10 seconds until Mimi’s screen unfroze. After that the interview continued without a hitch.

As you watch the above video, you’ll hear Mimi talk about:

***why to become healthy you need to become empowered and take responsibility for your health

***how she manages to wear out her boyfriend, who’s 19 years younger than she is

***why the way you think, your attitude about life, your happiness, and your ability to laugh are also crucial to health, along with diet

***what holds people back from changing their diet and making healthy lifestyle choices

***how she manages to live a stress-free life

***what the common threads are amongst people who live long lives

***how to start living a healthier lifestyle

***why eating meat and dairy is unhealthy

***that she takes no medications, and also takes no supplements

***why she shops primarily at farmer’s markets

Mimi Kirk has a lot to say, and all of it is valid. I think you’ll agree with me, as you watch this video, that Mimi is an incredible inspiration to all of us.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with the last installment of this three-part interview, so don’t forget to tune in tomorrow…

Living the Good Life, and the Idle Life

I continue on with this series What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like? with an interesting take on living a relaxed, very Low Density Lifestyle life, courtesy of English journalist Tom Hodgkinson.

This is an interview that comes courtesy of the website Good. Good is a collaboration of individuals, businesses and nonprofits pushing the world forward.

Tom Hodgkinson runs the website The Idler and is an advocate of the good life as the idle life. He thinks the way to happiness is to be a loafer.

Tom Hodgkinson’s books sometimes end up in bookstores’ self-help sections. That would make How to Be Idle and The Freedom Manifesto the only books to advocate dropping out of consumer society, ditching urban life, anarchy, bread baking, beer drinking, and generally living like it’s the Middle Ages. As co-founder and editor of The Idler magazine, Hodgkinson champions laziness, hedonism, thrift and a freewheeling DIY approach to life. Let him tell it, and it’s the key to a more ecologically sound future.

GOOD: You’re a known critic of consumer society, so tell us: what have you purchased yourself, lately?

Tom Hodgkinson: I try not to buy anything beyond beer, bacon, and books. Generally, though, I find that the older, the better. I did buy a painted pine bookcase recently from the local antique shop, which is very useful and beautiful.

Good: What’s your take on the global financial crisis?

T.H.: I am feeling very cheerful, to the point of smugness, about it. As someone who has no shares, no stocks, no bonds, no insurance policies, no pensions, and no money, I am feeling very safe. Money is for spending, not saving. I think average people should respond with great joy. At last, what businessmen used to call the “real world” has been exposed as imaginary. Perhaps what businessmen used to call a dream world—poetry, nature, God, the spirit, music, contemplation, books and good conversation—will now be seen as the “real world.”

Good: Just after the first major government bank bailouts were announced, you wrote that all that money would be better spent giving everyone an acre of land. What would we do with it?

T.H.: With just an acre of land a family of five or six can provide a huge amount of their food needs. You can keep animals and grow fruit and vegetables. This was the thinking behind Distributism, a political idea of the 1920s put about by Catholic intellectuals such as G. K. Chesterton. They saw a return to a medieval-style system where families combined smallholding with another source of income. Smallholding is enjoyable, useful, reconnects you with nature, is therapeutic, keeps you fit and healthy and is enormously satisfying. The quality of the produce is far higher than the products of the industrialized food system. You can also do more or less of it as circumstances change. A large garden in the city, or even a terrace, can be used to grow delicious food.

Good: Yes, you’ve written quite a bit in praise of the Middle Ages—in fact, you argue they were sort of a golden age of social justice and sustainability. Really? That’s not how most people think of them.

T.H.: We have been taught the negative version of the Middle Ages by the people who replaced them, the Puritans and Protestants. If you want to replace an existing system with your new system, then you need to besmirch the previous system. The idea we carry around in our minds of the Middle Ages is a ridiculous caricature. Just think about the beauty of the cathedrals—are they really a product of the Dark Ages? They outstrip the Empire State Building in terms of beauty by a million miles. The medieval economic system, interestingly, was against lending money at interest and it was for fixed prices. You were not allowed to undercut your fellow worker or manufacturer. In a sense the system was opposite to ours: It valued community over individuality, and precisely guarded against the kind of collapse that unrestrained competition has led to.

Good: To turn to modern times for a moment, what do you think of the whole “sustainability” trend?

T.H.: Three years ago, business hated anything “green.” Then they realized that it was simply a new market, and therefore great news. What sustainability really means is growing your own vegetables. It means wood not plastic, composting toilets, chickens in the yard. It means fun and a different kind of life—not just swapping one brand for another.

Good: In The Freedom Manifesto, you urge readers to “stop consuming and start producing.” What’s that mean?

T.H.: In practical terms it means rediscovering our ability to make things, like bread, jam and clothes. Instead of buying everything, grow stuff, make stuff—rediscover the lost arts of husbandry. When you cut down your need for money in this way, you cut down your need for work, leading to more idleness all round. Look at Cuba today. Look at the U.K. during the Second World War. You can supply for yourself a lot more of the things that you need.

Good: But Cuba is dirt poor. Is that what you’re advocating?

T.H.: I just want to say that living on modest means is not necessarily a bad thing. Thrift can be creative. I don’t really care whether people are rich or poor: the thing really is your approach to life. I just happen to think that promoting the idea of being rich is ridiculous, because only a few people can be rich, whereas many can live on modest incomes. So to me it makes a lot of practical sense to promote, not poverty, exactly, but the ability to live well on small incomes.

Good: Is that what you mean in The Freedom Manifesto, when you urge readers to “Reject Career”? Do you think people should give up work and all the ambition that goes with it?

T.H.: It is not so much work per se that I am against, but rather work for someone else and work that you don’t enjoy. I work quite hard, about four hours a day, but I do things that I enjoy. How can we reclaim work for ourselves, and make it something joyful and creative? As for aspirations, I think that to aspire to real freedom in everyday life should replace the aspiration to make a lot of money.

Good: A final question, and an important one: you’ve suggested that people should buy ukuleles. Um, why?

T.H.: I don’t really believe that anyone should do anything. But having said that, I personally have derived a huge amount of pleasure from learning the uke. They are better than iPods. I play Woody Guthrie songs and the Beatles. Kids can play it, and it’s elegant for the ladies: think Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn. They are very cheap and very portable, and they’ve got that fun-loving Hawaiian vibe. You can have one on your desk and practice while waiting for large downloads. Try it: Take a uke to work.

Tom Hodgkinson’s most recent book, The Freedom Manifesto, is available from Harper Perennial. His website is http://idler.co.uk/.

The website Good is located at http://www.good.is/

The Swine Flu: Where Does It Come From?

The last two articles of this two-week old series on meat discussed the rampant use of drugs with livestock, both antibiotics and steroids.

It is not a good thing for your health when you eat meat laden with these drugs. Nor will it help you in your quest to live a Low Density Lifestyle.

Another detrimental thing about eating meat to consider is the conditions livestock live in on feeding lots, as these conditions can affect both personal and public health.

One case in point is the swine flu. Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last year, or been out in space exploring the peripheral ends of the universe, you’ve been inundated with news and information about the swine flu.

Yet things may not be as they seem, or at least as reported by the media.

In the above video interview, noted journalist, best-selling author, and food industry critic Michael Pollan discusses the origins of the swine flu, saying that the genesis of it is from industrial pork operations, where pigs live in tight and unsanitary confined quarters, which creates a perfect environment for the swine flu to incubate.

As Pollan points out in the above interview, “we’ve created these petri dishes for these new diseases.”

Unfortunately, as Michael Pollan states, as pressure has built on American agricultural concerns to be more regulated, these companies have moved major parts of their operations to Mexico in order to get past regulations.

Pig farms are “pretty hellish places,” Pollan states, and because the pigs are kept too close together their tails have to be snipped off in order that pigs don’t scratch and bite off other pig’s tails.

Pollan also talks about sugar and high fructose corn syrup, and how companies are saying their foods are healthy if it contains sugar and not corn syrup.

Sugar and high fructose corn syrup is something I discussed on the website a few months ago. You can also read about how companies are promoting sugar as the natural choice with the article “And so now guess who is being hyped as the natural choice.”

The Meat You Eat: Steroid Use in Livestock

In yesterday’s article, I discussed the rampant use of antibiotics with livestock – primarily used as a tool to help them grow larger and bigger – and how 70% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. is for livestock use.

But that’s only half the story of the drugging of livestock: antibiotics aren’t the only drugs given to livestock to help them grow faster.

Each year, U.S. farmers raise some 36 million beef cattle. 99% of all beef cattle entering feedlots in the United States are given steroidal hormone implants to promote faster growth.

A large percentage of poultry and pigs are also fed these drugs.

Many cattle are fed the same muscle-building androgens—usually testosterone surrogates—that some athletes consume. Other animals receive estrogens, the primary female sex hormones, or progestins, semiandrogenic agents that shut down a female’s estrus cycle. Progestins fuel meat-building by freeing up resources that would have gone into the reproductive cycle.

While federal law prohibits people from self-medicating with most steroids, administering these drugs to U.S. cattle is allowed.

There are six anabolic steroids given, in various combinations, to nearly all animals entering conventional beef feedlots in the U.S. and Canada:

* Three natural steroids (estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone), and
* Three synthetic hormones (the estrogen compound zeranol, the androgen trenbolone acetate, and progestin melengestrol acetate).

So this means that when you eat meat, chicken or pork, and drink milk, you are consuming unsafe drugs that weren’t prescribed to you.

Consuming extra hormones disturbs the natural hormonal balance in the body, and eating animal products laced with hormones can have serious consequences for both children and adults.

Kids’ bodies are small and still developing, so exposure to even tiny amounts of the hormones in animal products on a regular basis can have a large impact. According to a report on hormones in meat and milk that appeared in The Los Angeles Times, “The amount of estradiol in two hamburgers eaten in one day by an 8-year-old boy could increase his total hormone levels by as much as 10 percent, based on conservative assumptions, because young children have very low natural hormone levels.”

The Cancer Prevention Coalition warns parents that even small amounts of animal products contain enough hormonal residues to harm children, saying, “No dietary levels of hormones are safe, and a dime-sized piece of meat contains billions of hormone molecules.”

When kids eat the flesh of cows who were treated with hormones, the spike in hormone levels can disrupt the development of their brain and sex organs. According to a report by the European Union on the effects of hormone-laced animal products, “Certain organs are more susceptible to the effects of estrogens, androgens, and anti-androgens [all hormones used in cows raised for food] during development than during adulthood. These organs include the brain, and the … primary and secondary sex organs.”

The negative consequences of feeding children meat were clearly demonstrated in Puerto Rico in the early 1980s, when thousands of children experienced premature sexual development and painful ovarian cysts; the culprit was meat from cattle who had been treated with growth-promoting sex hormones.

The hormones in meat-based diets are also blamed for the early sexual development of young girls in the Western world—nearly half of all African-American girls and 15 percent of their white peers now enter puberty at the age of 8.

Raising the amount of estrogen and other hormones in our bodies through the consumption of meat and milk can cause other disorders, including gynecomastia, or enlarged male breasts. In one school in Italy, nearly one in three boys aged 3 to 5 and more than half of boys aged 6 to 10 were found to have enlarged breasts, and the hormones in meat were suspected to have caused the disorder.

And that’s just the known effects it has on children. For adults, it can have all kinds of repercussions, from hormonal imbalances, to auto-immune problems, cancer, liver and kidney failure, and all kinds of other things.

Questions and controversy over the impacts of these added hormones on human development and health have lingered for four decades. In 1988 the European Union banned the use of all hormone growth promoters in meat because of these issues.

Yet, the U.S. FDA refuses to adequately regulate their use to promote growth in cows, even though these very same drugs in the U.S. are prohibited for over-the-counter use by humans.

And to take it one step further, all concern about the use of steroids in animals has focused on whether trace residues of these hormones in the meat have human-health consequences.

But there’s another way that these powerful agents can find their way into people and other animals. A substantial portion of the hormones literally passes through the cattle into their feces and ends up in the environment, where it can get into other food and drinking water.

Yikes!

The Drugging of Livestock

There are many reasons to consider cutting down or cutting out eating meat. Over the course of this series I’ve talked about the health and environmental ramifications of a meat-based diet.

And of course, cutting down or cutting out meat consumption plays a key role in living a Low Density Lifestyle.

But one of the detrimental health ramifications that I haven’t mentioned to this point is the fact that livestock – chickens, pigs, and cattle – are fed antibiotics on a routine basis. They are fed the drugs not to stop illness but to encourage rapid growth, by promoting weight gain or more efficient feed consumption.

This is a public health nightmare, because the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock can lead to the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans, because it causes the development of bacteria that are immune to many treatments.

70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States is given to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle annually – a total of twenty-five million pounds of antibiotics per year fed to these animals. This is eight times more than the amount used as human medicine.

The FDA reports that 2 million Americans contract bacterial infections during hospital stays annually, and “70 percent of the infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic.”
This is the price that Americans pay for the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock.

With that in mind, in July the Obama administration announced that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans.

In written testimony to the House Rules Committee, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner at the FDA of food and drugs, said feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle should cease. And Dr. Sharfstein said farmers should no longer be able to use antibiotics in animals without the supervision of a veterinarian.

In July, Congressional hearings were held to discuss a measure proposed by Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee. It would ban seven classes of antibiotics important to human health from being used in animals, and would restrict other antibiotics to therapeutic and some preventive uses.

These drugs are penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincosamides, streptogramins, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides, along with any other drug used to treat bacterial illness in people.

The legislation is supported by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Pew Environment Group, and the American Medical Association, among other groups, but opposed by farm organizations like the National Pork Producers Council. The farm lobby’s opposition makes its passage unlikely, but advocates are hoping to include the measure in the legislation to revamp the health care system.

Of course, we know how famously well legislation to revamp the health care system is faring. It’s been watered down many times by interest groups – primarily the insurance and drug companies – who have much to lose if the status quo is upended.

The use of antibiotics for “purposes other than for the advancement of animal or human health should not be considered judicious use,” Dr. Sharfstein said in his written testimony. “Eliminating these uses will not compromise the safety of food.”

Much of Dr. Sharfstein’s testimony summarized information that has been widely accepted for years by medical groups.

Robert Martin, a senior officer at the Pew Environment Group, which has paid for an advertising campaign to support the measure, said the prospects for the measure’s passage were improving.

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